Metro Vancouver commercial real estate sales had their most active quarter in five years, with 660 transactions across the Lower Mainland in the first three months of 2016, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV).

That is up 26% from 524 sales in the same period in 2015, the REBGV noted.

Those increased sales were also larger than in 2015.

The total dollar value of the sales in the first quarter of 2016 was $2.904 billion, up 78.1% from $1.63 billion in the same period in 2015.

“The commercial market is picking up where it left off after a record-setting year in 2015,” said Dan Morrison, who is REBGV’s president.

“We’re seeing steady demand across all major commercial real estate categories in our region.”

The hottest class of property was land sales, given that there were 271 such transactions in the first quarter of 2016. That’s a 42.6% increase from the 190 land sales in the same period in 2015. Those sales combined to be worth $1.669 billion, which was a 118.3% more than the $764 million in the same period in the year before.

There were 201 sales in that were in the office and retail category in the first quarter of 2016. That is up 15.5% from the 174 sales in the same period in 2015.

The dollar value of those sales was $815 million, for a 111.9% increase over $384 million in the first quarter of 2015.

The other main categories of transaction – industrial and multi-family – were both comprised of smaller transactions in 2016 than in 2015.

There were 151 industrial land sales in the first three months of 2016, which is 16.2% more than the 130 sales in the same period of 2015.

The dollar value of industrial sales in that time frame was $229 million, or 8.5% less than the $250 million in Q1 2015.

As for multi-family land sales, there were 37 transactions in the first three months of 2016.

That is up 23.3% compared with 30 such sales in the same period of 2015. The dollar value of multi-family sales during the quarter was $191 million, or 17.5% less than the $231 million in the same period in 2015.

Commercial Real Estate Sales Highest in 5 Years by Glen Korstrom | Business in Vancouver